Mozart and scatology
In her best headmistress style, she gave me a severe wigging for putting on a play that depicted Mozart as a scatological imp with a love of four-letter words.
I said that Mozart's letters proved he was just that: he had an extraordinarily infantile sense of humour ... "I don't think you heard what I said", replied the Prime Minister.
American academic Robert Spaethling's rendered translation of part of a letter Mozart sent from Mannheim 5 November 1777: Dearest cozz buzz!
I have received reprieved your highly esteemed writing biting, and I have noted doted thy my uncle Garfuncle, my aunt Slant, and you too, are all well mell.
Oui, by the love of my skin, I shit on your nose, so it runs down your chin...[15]One of the letters Mozart wrote to his father while visiting Augsburg reports an encounter Mozart and his cousin had with a priest named Father Emilian: [He was] an arrogant ass and a simple-minded little wit of his profession ... finally when he was a little drunk, which happened soon, he started on about music.
The reason he favored these small and crude pieces in ways similar to his more serious and important works remains a mystery.
[17]Historian Lucy Coatman argues that Maria Anna Thekla and Mozart likely had a shared sense of humour, something which she believes has been "discounted throughout much of the historiography on this set of correspondence".
[18]: 3 While scholars are not aware of her replies to her cousin, it can be assumed from what is known of their relationship and his continued correspondence that she was likely not offended by Mozart's vulgar references.
Folksongs, folktales, proverbs, folk speech—all attest to the Germans' longstanding special interest in this area of human activity.
[29] Likewise, when Mozart sang to Aloysia Weber the words "Leck mich das Mensch im Arsch, das mich nicht will" ("Whoever doesn't want me can lick my arse") on the occasion of being romantically rejected by her, he was evidently singing an existing folk tune, not a song of his own invention.
[30] Coatman, who supports a social and philological explanation of Mozart's scatology, has suggested that any retrospective diagnoses reveal a problem with the perusal of letters as a genre.
[18]: 5 She notes that by projecting modern sensibilities back onto the letters, scholars from a range of fields have "failed to understand the historical context, language usage of eighteenth-century Salzburg, and indeed, the personality of Mozart".
[18]: 2 Benjamin Simkin's compilation lists scatological letters by Mozart to the following individuals:[32] The canons were first published after Mozart's death with bowdlerized lyrics;[citation needed] for instance, "Leck mir den Arsch fein rein" ("Lick me in the arse nice and clean") became "Nichts labt mich mehr als Wein" ("Nothing refreshes me more than wine").
Voices and conjectured dates are from Zaslaw & Cowdery (1990:101–105); and links marked "score" lead to the online edition of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe.
